My twenty-year class reunion is coming up on June 8. I can still remember my ten-year reunion. I had to go without my wife, as she was confined to bed due to a high-risk pregnancy. My parents lived in Van Buren, MO, where I graduated, so I had a place to stay.

How things have changed in the last ten years.

My daughter from the above-mentioned pregnancy is nine years old. I am divorced from her mother and have since remarried. My father passed away in 2006 and my mother now lives less than three miles from me. Whew!

Since I no longer have family in the area with whom we could stay, I told my wife that we would need to book rooms at one of the places in Van Buren pretty far in advance for that weekend. Her response?

“Really? In Van Buren, Missouri? All thirty-eight of your classmates are going to fill every one of the motels and lodges in the area, huh?”

Vickie, who was also raised in a small town (Richmond, MO), had a graduating class of 700. She likes to tease me about the size of my high school. The problem with her logic is that Van Buren, like Sera, MO, in my latest novel, is a tourist town that grows massively during the summer. Especially on the weekends, people will come from all over to stay there and fish, swim and float on the Current River. So I was expecting some issues with finding a room. And I was right.

Without exception, every place that I contacted, from the bed and breakfasts to the motels, had a two-night minimum stay on the weekends. Given our day jobs and the fact that my daughter is due back at her mother’s house that Monday, two days isn’t feasible.